


Communiques

by Rubynye



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 17:42:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15148433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: Three conversations between Padme and Obi-Wan





	Communiques

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaegermighty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/gifts).



> Dear Jaegermighty: you have the most wonderfully imaginative, fertile prompts. These are just three little chips off the sculpted iceberg you deserve for all your amazing ideas.

_One._

Obi-Wan finds the young queen alone and angry at Hangar Five. It’s his second trip there since Qui-Gon gave him the task, voice low and deep with regret; he has crisscrossed every public area of the Temple for hours, and even poked into a couple of more secluded spots. While the Council met, her sparse belongings vanished from her guest quarters, almost as if she had never been granted asylum in the Temple to begin with. As if Obi-Wan had dreamt her up, fierce and bright in his calm, dull-colored life.

But here she is now, a small figure almost hidden between ships, jabbing her orders into the external keypad of a nondescript shuttle. She’s laid aside her makeup, her ceremonial robes, dressed in a plain but neat spacer’s outfit and even more pride than he’s yet seen. Obi-Wan settles his footsteps as close as silence as he can; he doesn’t intend to sneak up on Queen Amidala, but he would rather not spook her into running until he can reach her.

“Go away,” she says sooner than she ought to notice him, voice sharp through the air, not deigning to turn her head. Her fingers pause, tap in a last command, and sweep across the panel, dismissing it to sheet over with the dark gray covering the exterior of this little craft.

“Your Majesty—“ Obi-Wan starts.

“Go _away_.” Queen Amidala lifts the side hatch, opening a shuttle she shouldn’t have been able to unlock. Obi-Wan decides not to point that out to her. “I’m leaving.”

“The Council,” he says again, somewhat helplessly. He is.a Jedi Padawan. Non-Jedi tend to listen when he speaks.

“Agree with the Senate.” Her head lowers the barest fraction, the loops of her braids trembling either side of her bared neck. “I know.”

“How--“ When the Council was still in chambers?

“I am a queen!” She turns to face him now, and the glint in her narrowed eyes stops his steps. “I know.” She turns away again, towards the open hatch. “I know no help will accompany me from Coruscant. I’m leaving.”

Obi-Wan opens his mouth before he knows what he’ll say, which is not common for him. “Alone?” 

She only turns her head, only enough to see one dark eye flick towards him. “Did you not hear me, Master Jedi?” Only enough to watch her pale, unpainted cheek shift as she speaks.

“I’m not a Master yet.” Irrelevant, Obi-Wan tells himself, gathers himself, and adds, “But I’ve never heard such nonsense from a Queen.” Amidala’s eye goes round enough to show the white all round the jewel brown, and he presses his advantage. “You have no allies, no weapons —“

She inhales to speak, and he expects another snarl, but when she turns fully to him again her voice is cool and even as when she spoke in the Council chamber. “Are you offering me some?”

Obi-Wan is hit, skewered, entirely at a loss. Amidala lifts her chin, looped braids framing her face. “You’re a tactician, Kenobi. A Jedi. It would be an accomplishment to free an entire planet, wouldn’t it?”

She smiles, just a little, on one side of her small plump mouth. Behind Obi-Wan is the entire Jedi Temple and everything he’s known for nearly twenty years. “I can’t just run off.” Behind him Qui-Gon waits, his Master, his teacher.

Before him, Queen Amidala looks him in the eye. “Why not? Jedi have done more with less.”

“But the Council—“

“I already asked them.” Amidala tugs off her glove and holds out her bare, small hand. “My handmaidens all died to deliver me here so I could ask them. I’m asking you now, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” She steps forward to him, hand extended, between request and order. “You’re my one remaining hope. Come with me.”

Obi-Wan steps forward, even as he reminds her, and himself, “You wanted me to go away.”

“I am not going back,” she counters. “I’m leaving. Come with me. Help me save my planet.”

Just him and this young queen against an entire planetary blockade. Obi-Wan takes the final reckless step and grips Amidala’s hand, earning a flash of her full smile.

Then he steps around the shuttle, and swings himself into the copilot’s seat as she settles into the pilot’s. The doors descend with a final hiss, cutting them off from Coruscant’s air, and Obi-Wan knows without knowing how that when Qui-Gon realizes what’s happened he’ll laugh. 

As the shuttle lifts towards the sky Obi-Wan mutters, “I hope I’m not your only hope.”

“Well, we might have a chance with the Gungans,” Amidala replies mildly, “They don’t care for most humans, but reputedly they like Jedi.” 

Obi-Wan tries to tell himself he has a bad feeling about this, but excitement crackles inside him as the blue sky thins to star-speckled black.

 

_Two._

Obi-wan is further from serenity than he’s prefer as he stumbles into Padme’s quarters. Since he last woke he’s fled across half the Galaxy, or so it feels, after an attempt on his life by his own clone troopers who shot his mount out from under him and sent him into hiding. After all that, Padme appears as an island of serenity framed by the window and the glittering Coruscanti night outside. 

So she appears, until she turns to him, and her mouth trembles, and he can feel her pulse pounding through the Force, all around them.

“Are you all right?” She asks, warm as ever, and Obi-Wan could recite his woes and pour out his fears.

Or he can shrug and say, “I’ve had better days,” as he crosses to sit beside her. “I don’t have much time now. Where’s Anakin?”

“I don’t know.” Padme’s voice, normally so smooth, quavers through the words. “I don’t… I don’t think I want to know right now. I need to leave for awhile.”

While the Galaxy is falling, these two are squabbling. Obi-Wan wants to roll his eyes and remind Padme she’s a Senator, until a colder thought halts him. “While pregnant?” 

“That’s why I have to go.” Padme’s hands curve over her belly. “Anakin spends more and more time with Palpatine, and his eyes, his mind, they’ve become opaque. This isn’t… this has never been safe,” and her mouth twists in a wry smile Obi-Wan can’t help but reflect, “but it’s a different kind of danger. I need to have my babies somewhere else than here.”

Obi-Wan has never seen Padme so hesitant. “You need to leave your husband,” he states, to put the truth out clearly, and watches her minutely wince, and breathe, and nod. 

“I need to think about it,” she tells him. “And I can’t return to Naboo, that’s the first place he’d look for me. In fact…” She trails off, looking down for a long moment at her hands draped over her rounded belly. “I don’t think I can hide anywhere, unless the Jedi hide me from him.”

Understanding hurts almost physically, all through Obi-Wan’s weary body. He lifts his hand and rests it on hers, over her unborn children. “I don’t think even the Jedi are able, anymore,” he tells her, watching her huge eyes widen. “I was attacked by my troopers today and I doubt I’m the only one. I came back to regroup.”

“The troopers? They would never have betrayed you, they must have been programmed!” Her face goes pale with horror. “By Palpatine — did you hear, he seized full power?” Padme jumps to her feet, gown whisking behind her. “If he attacked the Jedi before you could oppose him — that’s what he wants with Anakin—!”

A distant _BOOM_ rocks the city night, shaking their building. Obi-Wan leaps to catch her but Padme stands fast, feet apart, fist clenched, for the moment before she gasps and hurries to the opposite window. The view that shows the Jedi Temple. Obi-Wan turns, running after her, but even pregnant she reaches the window before him, pressing her hands to the viscose material as if she could reach the plume of smoke now billowing from the Temple. 

“He’s destroying the Jedi,” they mutter in unison, and glance at each other.

“Take me with you,” Padme insists, even as Obi-Wan shakes his head. “I can talk Anakin down from whatever Palpatine--“

“I can’t go after Anakin right now,” Obi-Wan reminds her, and she stops, and straightens, and nods.

“Be careful at the Temple,” she says, and he nods as he runs for the door. “Save as many as you can! Bring them here!” As he runs towards the Jedi Temple, the center of his Order, his life.

 

_Three._

 

Obi-Wan leans over his cistern and regards his creased reflection in the dark water. He’s growing old. Rapidly, unstoppably, in this barren desert. He’s not even as old as Qui-Gon was when Maul killed him, but already Obi-Wan looks wearier and grayer than his Master ever did, lines furrowing his face, streaks in his beard. Tattooine is aging him.

Stop being vain, he tells himself, and lowers the bucket to fetch up some water.

“Hello, Obi-Wan,” he hears behind him, in a quiet, raspy voice. He straightens —at least his back is still loyal — and turns to see Padme Naberrie, dusty and smiling and looking as tired as he feels. Her voice has never been the same since Mustafar.

“Just Ben now,” he reminds her, and she smiles wider as he comes to her, pressing her cheek to his chest as he wraps her in his arms for an embrace more heartening than all the water in the desert. 

Eventually, she shifts back, and he lets her go. “You look well,” he says, though she’s thinner, deeper lines cornering her eyes and lips. Her smile is small and wry, and she kindly doesn’t lie to him in turn, just takes the bucket from him and heads back into his low house.

They don’t say much, despite the months since her last visit. Her continued existence, the new wrinkles in both their faces, those are information enough. Side by side they prepare a simple meal and sit together to share it as the twin suns’ light lengthens towards nightfall.

Halfway through, though, she murmurs, “I think he knew me,” and Obi-Wan knows what she means there too. 

“As his mother?” He asks, and Padme shakes her head.

“No, of course. Would I burden him with that? But I saw him on his speeder, five klicks out from the farm, so I wandered by, close enough to be seen. He saw me, and knew he had before.”

Obi-Wan should chide her for recklessness, but he knows she knows he never would. After all they’ve sacrificed, she deserves this glimpse. “Good,” he murmurs instead, and “have you seen the girl recently?”, and takes another bite to let her answer.

Padme’s face lights in the dimness. “She’s thriving,” she tells him. “Bail and Breha love her limitlessly. I’m glad.” She looks down, smiling at the plate, at the memory. “I’m glad.”

Glad and aching, Obi-Wan knows, every moment since she separated herself from her children to avoid a Force signature strong enough for them to be found. He presses his arm against her shoulder and the plate into her hands, and she nods and wordlessly takes the rest of the meal.

Ordinarily Obi-Wan rises and sleeps with the suns, not risking the indulgence of nighttime lights, but tonight he shutters the windows tightly and stuffs odd cloths into the chinks, then sets out a single diode, white and tiny as a star from planetside. By its small light Padme looses her crown of braids and unweaves them, combing her long thick hair until it casts smooth glints back, every knot undone. Obi-Wan lies on his pallet and watches her, until she rises and unbuckles her flight suit, shaking out her clothes as she removes them until she’s naked in the thin light. She turns the diode over, then, switching it off, and walks through the darkness to climb beneath his blankets and robes with him.

Words are unneeded here too, as they lie together, skin sliding against skin, breaths shared softly as lips brush lips. Padme muffles her whimpers into his chest and Obi-Wan buries his cries in the scented fullness of her hair, and afterwards they remain curled together, a damp warm knot in the chill desert night.

Padme startles Obi-Wan awake when he hears her footstep and realizes his arms are empty. The sky is dark blue with incipient dawn and her hair is braided again as she winds it around her head. “Did we oversleep?” he asks.

She shakes her head, and he feels her smile through the Force more than he sees her lips curve in the dimness. “Not yet,” she replies, and “don’t get up, I know my way.” She bends over his pallet and they press hand to hand for a long last moment, before Padme Naberrie turns and walks away from the former Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He watches her go until she disappears into the darkness, and knows he will never see her again.


End file.
